As far as number one goes, it’s not a big deal. WWE spoils about 75% of their TV programming every week by taping shows in advance. If a guy is trying to “bring down the system from the inside” or whatever by telling Redditors that Randy Orton’s gonna win a ladder match, more power to him, but I’m not interested. The show’s fake enough and easy enough to predict already, I don’t need somebody to hold my hand.

Number two is pretty awesome, though. I wasn’t writing the Raw column when Snitsky was around, but when he first showed up he was MY FAVORITE. This is long before they shaved his head and gave him yellow teeth. If you don’t remember him, here’s the most succinct explanation of who he was and why he existed: Kane kidnapped Lita, using “violence against her boyfriend” as an explanation for raping, impregnating and forcing her to marry him. On a random episode of Raw, Kane was wrestling a new jobber named “Gene Snitsky.” Lita got knocked down during the match, and in the WWE Universe a pregnant woman who falls down once instantly miscarries the baby. Snitsky claimed the accident wasn’t his fault. “It’s not my fault” became his catchphrase. Eventually Snitsky revealed that he HATES BABIES and wants them to always be dying.

Meanwhile, in real life, Lita had gone from “Matt Hardy’s xtreme girlfriend” to “horrible tramp who cheated on Matt Hardy with his Edge” in the minds of fans, so WWE had Lita turn on the guy who’d kidnapped, raped, impregnated and force-married her to be Edge’s girlfriend. This made Kane the good guy. It also turned Snitsky from “jobber who accidentally caused an abortion and hates babies” to “guy who hates babies so much it is hilarious,” and a friend of Lita. I don’t know, these shows are written by and for CHUDs.

This is where we join the career trajectory of Gene Snitsky, on the night of Edge and Lita’s wedding. See, Edge and Lita wanted to get married, but only to spite Kane, because … uh, THEY were jerks? Anyway, to further rub it in Kane’s face, they brought out the man who’d murdered Kane’s child to read a poem.

Yes, he rhymed “do to us” with “dead baby in your uterus” and Lita was TOTALLY FINE WITH IT.

In WWE history, Snitsky’s poem ranks just ahead of the Big Boss Man’s “with tears that are soaked” poem about Big Show’s dad dying on the list of the most inappropriately funny, morbid things WWE has ever done. I’m not sure how good Snitsky will be at protecting Alex Rodriguez, but at least A-Rod won’t have to worry about any pregnancy scares.

In the interest of Never Forgetting, Snitsky’s original run also included the interaction with Heidenreich, the most awesome, sexually-concerning WWE character interaction ever.

My favourite promo ever (still) even though there have been some truly epic promos cut by a ton of the greats is one from the 80s during the period where Andre The Giant was “suspended” but was wearing a mask to wrestle under the name of Giant Machine as third member of the The Machines tag-team. WWE never said it was Andre. Andre never said it was Andre. The good guy announcers never said it was Andre. But everyone knew it was Andre because just fucking look at hit, mask or not. Anyhow, The Machines were feuding with King Kong Bundy and Big John Stud (managed, of course, by Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan) and Bundy, Studd and Heenan cut this killer promo where they were all wearing brown paper bags over their heads that said “Stud Machine” and “Bundy Machine” and “Brain Machine”. I don’t even remember exactly what they said, but it didn’t even matter. Calling out the obvious fact that it was Andre under the Giant Machine mask was so fucking funny, and I was only, like, 12 at the time.

I have fond memories of that 2004-05 era of Raw, in between when Orton and Cena were champion. Snitsky, Batista’s face turn, Tomko refusing to give Christian a beat, Muhammad Hassan’s unfortunate career, that period of time when Shelton Benjamin was awesome. Even a lot of the bad stuff was at least entertaining.

My personal favorite Snitsky moment was when he clotheslined Paul London off the ring apron during the Royal Rumble.